Empathy is power, but not the cool kind...
Some years ago I was living in this tiny, studio apartment in Portland. Your standard-issue early-20’s Starving Artist housing unit. View of another building, blood-colored water for the first several seconds when you turn on the tap, etc. I found myself one night, for some reason, watching a trash-TV news show about some serial killer (of course). Lying on my mattress on the floor, staring at the fuzzy reception on my 13” black & white TV. Lonely. Digesting my fourth consecutive dinner of rice avec ketchup. Ah. Good times. Good times.
So anyway, this serial killer had killed a man as one of his victims, and it really freaked me out at the time. I actually had trouble falling asleep – and not for the usual reasons. I mean I knew why, why the idea of a serial killer killing a man bothered me. No room to dissociate. I would have never said I did so, because of course it’s not a conscious move, but it’s human nature to assure ourselves of our own safety when we hear of horrors. We could not have been the victims because…
Because the victim was a woman.
Because the victim was gay.
Because the victim was black.
Whatever.
Or, looking to our horror-film standards: Because the victim was promiscuous. Because the victim was stupid and went to check out the sound upstairs by herself.
Not me, because…
Not me, because…
Not me, because…
If we want to see the extent we’ll go to, look at September 11, 2001. People were so frightened because it was us, it could have been any of us. Within a day or two, Jerry Falwell was saying that we deserved it because we are a nation of sinners: homosexuals, abortionists and masturbators. He said that! That because people masturbate, they deserved it!! But it was calming to a lot of people who could remind themselves that they are not gay, they don’t have abortions, or if they do they don’t admit it to each other, and they always feel really, really guilty when they masturbate, so there. Not me, because…
One of my classes is reading Elie Weisel’s Night, the story of his time in a concentration camp. I’ve been trying to get them to not refer to the victims as Jews, but as people. They are, almost universally, unwilling. They actively dislike the idea. I’ve been trying to break down these dissociative barriers so they can read the story with empathy, and direct understanding. I tried to explain that they weren’t Jews, they were people who were Jewish. I’ve tried reminding them that it wasn’t just Jews in the camps.
Side note: Several students thought that putting homosexuals in concentration camps was a good idea. None of them saw anything disturbing or ironic about agreeing with Nazi concentration camps. A couple did explain to me, though, that this was different, for you see, gays are gross. Ah! Touché! I was barely able to resist laughing at them and telling them to be careful of spiders and dust-bunnies that deep in the closet.
So, they won’t do it. Perhaps it’s just latching onto educational sound bites. “Slavery caused the civil war.” “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” “The Nazis put Jews in concentration camps.” But the active refusal really feels like a sort of fear of empathy. If it is only the scythe of timing and circumstance that separates you from such things, the stakes go way up. Security is lost. You are forced to imagine what these things are like in the past for people who are you, for all intents and purposes… then you have to do it in the present. You are forced to think about the horrors in the world that you do nothing about, or even encourage. And then what do you do?
Empathy very well may be the most dangerous and powerful thing in the world.
Addendum: Apparently - looking at the comments - I need to clarify. When I say empathy is dangerous, I mean to the status quo, to our comfort. This is not a bad thing, this is an amazing thing. A great thing, perhaps the greatest. It's just that it's frightening. Empathy will end wars. It will end terrorism and exploitation. It will end prejudice - if these students would empathize with concentration camp victims, it would never happen again (not these students specifically, of course, just in the general sense). So it is ultimate power, it's just that it's not the cool, Matrix-esque kind. It's power in the way that the pen is mightier than the sword, but no one wants Aragorn to carry a pen ("Orcs! I shall write a treatise enumerating their evils and calling for sanctions!"). It's power in the way that forgiveness is a power, but most people would prefer laser beam eyes.
I was trying to end the posting with a cool one-liner about empathy. Great.
So anyway, this serial killer had killed a man as one of his victims, and it really freaked me out at the time. I actually had trouble falling asleep – and not for the usual reasons. I mean I knew why, why the idea of a serial killer killing a man bothered me. No room to dissociate. I would have never said I did so, because of course it’s not a conscious move, but it’s human nature to assure ourselves of our own safety when we hear of horrors. We could not have been the victims because…
Because the victim was a woman.
Because the victim was gay.
Because the victim was black.
Whatever.
Or, looking to our horror-film standards: Because the victim was promiscuous. Because the victim was stupid and went to check out the sound upstairs by herself.
Not me, because…
Not me, because…
Not me, because…
If we want to see the extent we’ll go to, look at September 11, 2001. People were so frightened because it was us, it could have been any of us. Within a day or two, Jerry Falwell was saying that we deserved it because we are a nation of sinners: homosexuals, abortionists and masturbators. He said that! That because people masturbate, they deserved it!! But it was calming to a lot of people who could remind themselves that they are not gay, they don’t have abortions, or if they do they don’t admit it to each other, and they always feel really, really guilty when they masturbate, so there. Not me, because…
One of my classes is reading Elie Weisel’s Night, the story of his time in a concentration camp. I’ve been trying to get them to not refer to the victims as Jews, but as people. They are, almost universally, unwilling. They actively dislike the idea. I’ve been trying to break down these dissociative barriers so they can read the story with empathy, and direct understanding. I tried to explain that they weren’t Jews, they were people who were Jewish. I’ve tried reminding them that it wasn’t just Jews in the camps.
Side note: Several students thought that putting homosexuals in concentration camps was a good idea. None of them saw anything disturbing or ironic about agreeing with Nazi concentration camps. A couple did explain to me, though, that this was different, for you see, gays are gross. Ah! Touché! I was barely able to resist laughing at them and telling them to be careful of spiders and dust-bunnies that deep in the closet.
So, they won’t do it. Perhaps it’s just latching onto educational sound bites. “Slavery caused the civil war.” “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” “The Nazis put Jews in concentration camps.” But the active refusal really feels like a sort of fear of empathy. If it is only the scythe of timing and circumstance that separates you from such things, the stakes go way up. Security is lost. You are forced to imagine what these things are like in the past for people who are you, for all intents and purposes… then you have to do it in the present. You are forced to think about the horrors in the world that you do nothing about, or even encourage. And then what do you do?
Empathy very well may be the most dangerous and powerful thing in the world.
Addendum: Apparently - looking at the comments - I need to clarify. When I say empathy is dangerous, I mean to the status quo, to our comfort. This is not a bad thing, this is an amazing thing. A great thing, perhaps the greatest. It's just that it's frightening. Empathy will end wars. It will end terrorism and exploitation. It will end prejudice - if these students would empathize with concentration camp victims, it would never happen again (not these students specifically, of course, just in the general sense). So it is ultimate power, it's just that it's not the cool, Matrix-esque kind. It's power in the way that the pen is mightier than the sword, but no one wants Aragorn to carry a pen ("Orcs! I shall write a treatise enumerating their evils and calling for sanctions!"). It's power in the way that forgiveness is a power, but most people would prefer laser beam eyes.
I was trying to end the posting with a cool one-liner about empathy. Great.
posted by MacLymont at 10:34 AM
5 Comments:
Not you, because...??? What? You don't masterbate?
I never thought of empathy being a bad thing. But I suppose if your considered a "dark person" you think of stuff like that. It makes sense to me anyway...
Kelsey~
It's not so much that empathy is a bad thing or that he's thinking of that because he's supposedly a "dark person", he's trying to make a point of how empathy is, in a way, contradictory and ironic.
Ah, geez...please see the addendum on this posting so I can clarify what I mean.
I understand what you mean now about empathy being power...And just for the record when I said "dark person" I was being sarcastic...I wasn't serious...
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